Medical migration risk to poor countries’ health services

Wealthy countries have a responsibility to
consider the impact of hiring doctors from poorer countries
and try to minimise the practice, says Dr Otmar Kloiber,
Secretary General of the World Medical Association.

Dr
Kloiber, of Germany, is a guest speaker at the Association
of Salaried Medical Specialists 30th anniversary conference
in Wellington today.

New Zealand relies heavily on
international medical graduates, and was second only to
Israel on this measure on a table of OECD countries
displayed by Dr Kloiber.

The practice is depleting the
supply of doctors in poorer countries, depriving the local
population of health care. It was a global movement of
doctors from poor to rich countries.

Dr Kloiber says
it’s vital politicians in rich countries view health as an
investment. Too often it’s viewed as an expense, and this
means health systems are not properly resourced and the need
arises to look to other countries to supply doctors.

If
the working conditions including salaries of doctors trained
in New Zealand were improved in order to retain them in our
public hospitals, it would not need to depend so much on
raiding other countries of their doctors.

The World
Medical Association advocates for universal health coverage
and still needs to convince doctors in some countries that
this is not to their disadvantage. What is good for their
patients is good for the doctors as well.

He says primary
health care is the core of a comprehensive health care
system, but there are limits to what it can do and there
must be secondary and higher-level services.

“A good
primary health care system can deal with the vast majority
of cases that come up in health care. But if you structure a
health care system that is only primary health care than you
are producing a dead-end road.”

Dr Kloiber emphasised
the importance of governments addressing the social
determinants of health, such as housing and
education.

“The health care system alone is not the
answer to fighting inequity. We have to start much
earlier.”

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